Out to seize their children, courts hound a reformed family

A disturbing case reveals the remorseless way social workers and courts seek to
track down families who have fled to a new life abroad

A social worker visits a family (library picture)Photo:
ALAMY

By Christopher Booker

5:40 PM GMT 19 Nov 2013

Even Ofsted last week seemed to be joining the ever-growing number of people
alarmed by the extent to which our “child protection” system has gone
horrendously off the rails. After inspecting the performance of 152 local
authority “children’s services” departments, it reported that 83 per cent
were performing barely adequately, or worse. Even so, Ofsted made no mention
of one of the most disturbing scandals of all: the number of children being
taken into care for no good reason. And nowhere is this more obvious than in
the remorseless way our social workers and courts seek to track down
families who have fled from them to a new life abroad.

The latest example I investigated last week concerns a family torn apart two
years ago when the wife was admitted to a London hospital to be treated for
a serious gum infection. Because she suffers from attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder and speaks rather quickly, the hospital reported to
social services a suspicion that she might be on drugs. Although tests
showed that they were wrong, it was discovered that both she and her
husband, a Sikh brought up in Britain – they met when she was studying law
at the LSE – had been “recreational” users of cocaine.

Thanks to the parents’ record of drug use, and the fact that their home was
a tip (mainly because she had been in hospital), the social workers removed
their two young sons and put them into the care of a strict Muslim family.
The social workers brushed aside evidence that the boys were being smacked
and neglected. I am told that the older boy, pleading to be back with his
“Mummy and Daddy”, fell badly behind at school.

Their shocked parents began dramatically reforming their lifestyle. As tests
have confirmed, they gave up drugs. But when the wife last year produced a
daughter, there was talk of sending the boys for adoption and seizing the
baby, too. Increasingly desperate at the social workers’ failure to
recognise the efforts she and her husband had made to mend their ways, the
mother snatched her boys from care and she and her husband fled with the
children to Thailand.

Since then they have built a new life. They live in a neat house. The father
is a manager for an international company. The older boy has won a glowing
report from school. But instead of recognising this, the only response from
our “child protection” system has been to find any way to get the children
back to England. The British Embassy was asked to enlist the help of Thai
social workers, who reported that the children seemed happy and well looked
after, and they saw no cause to intervene.

But back in Britain, I gather, a judge is now so angry at their breaking of
the law that the parents have been warned that, unless they bring the
children back by the end of this month, the police will be asked to act.
Furthermore, the media will be informed and allowed to name the family. Yet
the moment the parents return to Britain, they are told, they could be
imprisoned and their children again taken into care.

If the system cannot recognise that these parents are now in a very
different state from that which prompted its intervention two years ago,
what can they do? They have no one to speak for them in a British court (at
several hearings, the mother, representing herself, found herself up against
three different sets of barristers and solicitors, plus a QC, all at great
public expense).

If the foreign authorities see no reason to intervene, why should this any
longer be a concern of our own courts, at such huge ongoing cost to British
taxpayers?